...also available for teaching, teacher training, translating, examining, English language consultational services, playing congas, singing in the shower and bar mitzvahs. Presently in training to become an old git in as short a time as is feasible.

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Sunday, January 15, 2006

Word of the day: Furkle (v) intrans. Part. about/around: That which hands should be getting up to under the covers during the watches of the night.

Drink of the day: Lagavulin

You remind me, gently prompt me even. You nudge me towards the inescapable truth that this blog has been in cryogenic suspension for far too long.

You are respectfully hesitant and choose your register with care. You retreat when my written response is terse to the point at which, were I to be charitable to myself, it could be interpreted as rudeness, an impolitesse to which I should, in all honesty, admit.

So. Wherefore was I thus stung? I draw the toxin ere it has time to burrow deep and realise that it came not from your arrows but from mine own. I am, therefore, doubly wounded; once by the mirror and again by the ice cold stab of consequent self judgement.

Don't you just love it when you can work a semi-colon into the narrative?

Now, where were we? Oh, yes. The hiatus. The pause. The blank page which has been my life since the first snowfall. And that, my dear, is a serious underestimation if ever there was. I could plead the mitigating circumstances of the dearth of gainful employment that has led to my spending the majority of my time at home which, were I to take David Byrne's definition of 'a place where nothing ever happens' could accurately be described as Heaven, and the attendant minutae of everyday life being insufficient to provide enough material for bloggage but I am not so sure.

When I started this blog, it was as an opportunity for me to communicate with an English speaking audience, to use my language freely and with abandon, released from the constraints of the classroom and the knowledge of my Hungarian interlocutors. In short, it was as unfocussed as the attention of a lecher in a whorehouse. To rant, to entertain, to focus my thoughts and explore my feelings, my life, my adoption, my daughter, my creed. The fact that it hasn't led to the revelation of Jeeves' recipe for the mid-morning restorative is neither here nor there. But that very lack of focus seems to have dissipated my energies somewhat.

And then, with time, all these options became exhausted and I was forced into the acceptance of that which I had known all along. That my character and all my creative abilities are, in essence, reactive. Kan does not do creation. Or, that which he is capable of has, by now, been done and done to death. Psychologists among you may note at this point, the shift into the third person but I care not a jot. Yah boo and sucks to you.

Even as a musician, I react to others' creative input. I can refine, improve and extrapolate in an infinite number of ways but to ask me to create that spark, that flash of inspiration, would be a fruitless endeavour.

My mind works quickly. Be my straight man, or woman, and I will give you the gags. Just don't ask me to write the script. I am drawn more to forums, chat rooms and comments these days than to this blog. The immediacy and opportunity for a witty riposte attract and yet fail to completely satisfy due to their transient nature. Here today, gone today. Posterity? I've sat it.

As a writer, I am a fraud. Yes, I can sling words together with a certain rythmn and cadence and I realise that I am at my most effective when I choose to forget my influences. I could tell a story, maybe. Invent one? Well, not for you lot anyway. My daughter remains the sole recipient of Kan the Man Storylines Inc. and, as yet, she isn't telling. Although the tale of the wedding of Miss Fartpants and Mr Burpalot may well last as long as my lineage and be among the most requested at bedtime, I doubt I shall be mortaring the publishers at my gate.

And my life in comparison to yours, my friend? A breeze, I believe, is the expression, although whether or not it could be described as being in any way current is debatable to say the least.

But, then again, I am approaching senility and will soon begin to dribble.